Los actos violentos que se narran en La cinta blanca (Michael Haneke, 2009) nos llevan a plantearnos ciertas cuestiones sobre lo que Hannah Arendt dio en llamar “banalidad del mal” y cómo dicho concepto se refleja en el filme. Retomando algunas de las cuestiones planteadas por la autora en sus obras Los orígenes del totalitarismo (1951), La condición humana (1958) y Eichmann en Jerusalén. Un estudio sobre la banalidad del mal (1963) trataremos de dar respuesta a las siguientes preguntas: ¿son (...) los niños/as incapaces de percibir la maldad de sus actos?, ¿son conscientes moralmente?, ¿la violencia se utiliza como una forma de revelarse frente a la autoridad o como un modo de poner en juego los valores que ésta les ha enseñado? Es decir, ¿podemos hablar de la banalidad del mal para describir los actos de los/as niños/as? La respuesta a esta pregunta parece ser afirmativa, pero cabe establecer una distinción importante entre los diferentes actos que se describen en el filme, para esto acudiremos también a las ideas de autores como Peter Sloterdijk y Jean Paul Sartre. (shrink)

“Llega a ser el que eres”, lema de Píndaro, es la nota final que unifica filosofía y biografía en Ortega porque actúa como vínculo, a la vez ético y vital, entre el yo y el mundo. Dicho vínculo se llama técnicamente “vocación”, y en la filosofía tardía de Ortega es la única fuente de sentido de la propia vida. La vocación decisiva de Ortega fue la intelectual o filosófica, en el sentido socrático-platónico, no la del “intelectual” como figura que interviene (...) en asuntos públicos, aunque asumiera ese papel con notable intensidad hasta 1932 o 1933. Desde que la Guerra Civil española estalla decidió no ma- nifestarse sobre temas políticos. Uno de los textos que más a fondo reflexiona sobre la condición del intelectual en el doble sentido indicado fue “El intelectual y el otro” (1940), que dialoga dramáticamente con la circunstancia argentina en la que y para la que fue escrito, pero que tuvo repercusiones en el mundo del exilio republi- cano en la América hispana, especialmente en México. (shrink)

IntroductionCognitive impairment is a highly prevalent non-motor feature of Parkinson’s disease. A better understanding of the underlying pathophysiology may help in identifying therapeutic targets to prevent or treat dementia. This study sought to identify metabolic alterations in the prefrontal cortex, a key region for cognitive functioning that has been implicated in cognitive dysfunction in PD.MethodsProton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy was used to investigate metabolic changes in the PFC of a cohort of cognitively normal individuals without PD, as well as PD participants (...) with either normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment, or dementia. Ratios to Creatine resonance were obtained for glutamate, glutamine and glutamate combined, N-acetylaspartate, myoinositol, and total choline, and correlated with cognitive scores across multiple domains administered to the PD participants only.ResultsWhen individuals retain cognitive capabilities, the presence of Parkinson’s disease does not create metabolic disturbances in the PFC. However, when cognitive symptoms are present, PFC Glu/Cre ratios decrease with significant differences between the PD-NC and PPD groups. In addition, Glu/Cre ratios and memory scores were marginally associated, but not after Bonferroni correction.ConclusionThese preliminary findings indicate that fluctuations in prefrontal glutamate may constitute a biomarker for the progression of cognitive impairments in PD. We caution for larger MRS investigations of carefully defined PD groups. (shrink)

En Carl Schmitt en la Segunda República Española Gabriel Guillén Kalle analiza aspectos particulares de Carl Schmitt en ese periodo de nuestra nación en entreguerras. El autor reconoce que la recepción republicana fue primordialmente jurídica, mas esta perspectiva conlleva observar ese concepto de lo polítíco que atraviesa su obra entera. Guillén propone una estrategia para la relectura de Schmitt en ese periodo y para ello analiza a los principales autores que se ocuparon de él, sin desdeñar a algunos menos conocidos (...) como puede ser Zozaya. Un tema importante para nuestra nación es el control de constitucionalidad que Schmitt, siguiendo a Constant con la teoría del poder moderador, encuentra en el Presidente del Reich, y que en la segunda República española se dejó en un organismo, el Tribunal de Garantías Constitucionales que pretendía colocarse por encima de las pasiones, aunque por su composición -poco jurídica- condujo al fracaso. También es de interés cómo Medina sitúa el pensamiento schmittiano de los órdenes concretos en el idealismo objetivo necesitando de dualismos para su existencia. (shrink)

In a pair of very important papers, namely “Space, Time and Individuals” in the Journal of Philosophy for October 1955 and “The Indestructibility and Immutability of Substances” in Philosophical Studies for April 1956, Professor N. L. Wilson began something which badly needed beginning, namely the construction of a logically rigorous “substance-language” in which we talk about enduring and changing individuals as we do in common speech, as opposed to the “space-time” language favoured by very many mathematical logicians, perhaps most notably (...) by Quine. This enterprise of Wilson's is one with which I could hardly sympathize more heartily than I do; and one wishes for this logically rigorous “substance-language” not only when one is reading Quine but also when one is reading many other people. How fantastic it is, for instance, that Kotarbinski1 should call his metaphysics “Reism” when the very last kind of entity it has room for is things —instead of them it just has the world-lines or life-histories of things; “fourdimensional worms”, as Wilson says. Wilson, moreover, has at least one point of superiority to another rebel against space-time talk, P. F. Strawson; namely he does seriously attempt to meet formalism with formalism—to show that logical rigour is not a monopoly of the other side. At another point, however, Strawson seems to me to see further than Wilson; he is aware that substance-talk cannot be carried on without tenses, whereas Wilson tries to do without them. Wilson, in short, has indeed brought us out of Egypt; but as yet has us still wandering about the Sinai Peninsula; the Promised Land is a little further on than he has taken us. (shrink)

WHAT do we mean by saying that a being, God for example, is omniscient? One way of answering this question is to translate ‘God is omniscient’ into some slightly more formalised language than colloquial English, e.g. one with variables of a number of different types, including variables replaceable by statements, and quantifiers binding thes.

Author's answers to questions on Buddhist philosophy, posed to him by some foreign scholars.

We argue that the physics of complex materials and self-organizing processes should be made central to the biology of form. Rather than being encoded in genes, form emerges when cells and certain of their molecules mobilize physical forces, effects, and processes in a multicellular context. What is inherited from one generation to the next are not genetic programs for constructing organisms, but generative mechanisms of morphogenesis and pattern formation and the initial and boundary conditions for reproducing the specific traits of (...) a taxon. There is no inherent antagonism between this “physicalist” perspective and genetics, since physics acts on matter, and gene products are essential material components of living systems whose variability affects the systems’ parameters. We make this notion concrete by summarizing the concept of “dynamical patterning modules” (DPMs; Newman and Bhat, Phys Biol 5:1–14, 2008; Int J Dev Biol 53:693–705, 2009), an explicit physico-genetic framework for the origin and evolution of multicellular form in animals, as well as (when differences in interaction toolkit genes and applicable physical processes are taken into account) in multicellular plants (Hernández-Hernández et al., Int J Dev Biol 56:661–674, 2012). DPMs provide the missing link between development and evolution by revealing how genes acting in concert with physics can generate and transform morphology in a heritable fashion. (shrink)